Agri ministry defends underspending

The Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform has defended its 8% under-expending during the 2021/22 financial year.

According to a statement issued by ministry spokesperson Chrispin Matongela, of the N$1,22 billion total budget allocation, the ministry spent N$1,12 billion (92%).

“The remaining 8% or N$98 million that was not spent is a result of various reasons. For instance, main division 02: administration resulted in under-expenditure of N$15,8 million.

“This amount was mainly meant to cater for the recruitment of critical budgeted positions within the ministry. At the end of the financial year, the ministry only managed to recruit about 60% of these positions, mainly due to interviews that could not be held due to Covid-19 restrictions,” said Matongela.

He said the other factors contributing to the under-spending on capital projects was the non-completion of construction works, non-responsive bidders (resulting in the re-launching of procurement processes), unresolved court cases on disputed bids, late submission of invoices for payment by service providers in the last quarter of the year before the closure of the financial year.

“As much as we agree that under-spending is not desirable, most of these challenges were not within the control of the ministry. It is worth expounding that N$98 million was part of the estimated ceilings of Vote 37, but this amount was never disbursed to the ministry as the planned activities were not carried out.

“It is, therefore, not correct for anyone to insinuate that because funds were not disbursed to the vote they would be used for corruption,” he said.